RALPH PEDERSEN was evacuated from Pitt Street to Hoole in Cheshire in September 1939 aged just four. He was back in Liverpool before the May blitz of 1941.

“THE raids were a nightmare, but they could be beautiful; the sight of the searchlights scanning across the sky at night; light shining off a barrage balloon and lighting the low cloud, feathers across a midnight-blue sky, looking so close you could almost touch them. The night the Custom House was hit I shall never forget, it was like a night from Dante’s Inferno and yet, at the same time, beautiful.

“In the dark night, the dome of the Custom House glowed like a red ball that seemed like a volcano about to erupt...

“A ship in dry dock was hit and exploded, causing tremendous damage...one of the buildings bombed at this time was St Michael’s in the City in Pitt Street, but it was not demolished, it stood with its columns and towers of stone, obviously highly dangerous.

“The Army came and used dynamite, while we stood and watched part of our environment disappear.

“About this time, a barrage balloon had come down and was hanging deflated on the roof of St Vincent's like a grey shroud.”

In the wrecked buildings, he found an adventure playground to end them all.

“Our group of boys, like rats, would scramble through the mountain of shattered concrete to the basement stairs and to a lake that had invaded the whole of the basement area.

“Light filtered through various holes and in the dim light, we built rafts with the timber that was lying everywhere, and went rafting through the underworld.”